NYU School of Law and University of Chile School of Law to become global partners

A December conference on the use of cost-benefit analysis to set domestic environmental policy in developing and emerging economies served a dual purpose as an occasion to seal an agreement between NYU School of Law and the University of Chile School of Law for a scholarly partnership.

Hosted by the University of Chile School of Law and its Center on Regulation and Competition and organized by Professor Gonzalo Moyano (LL.M. ’09), “How to Improve Regulation: Regulatory reform and economic activity” focused on how countries with limited resources can maximize the benefits of environmental protection while reducing the economic costs. Dean Richard Revesz and Michael Livermore ’06, executive director of the NYU Law Institute for Policy Integrity, attended with Meera de Mel '05, assistant dean for global programs at NYU Law.

This conference is part of a multi-year effort led by Revesz and Livermore to examine how cost-benefit analysis is used in the global context. In October of 2010, the two convened a workshop at the NYU-Abu Dhabi Institute on the topic of “global cost-benefit analysis,” gathering top experts from the world of academia, government, and civil society to discuss the theoretical and practical issues that have arisen as the use of cost-benefit analysis has spread around the world. That two day conference produced a set of case studies from a number of global contexts—from dam building in Panama to air pollution in Singapore—that will serve as the foundation for a book edited by them to be published by Oxford University Press in the fall of 2012.

The first NYU-Chile collaboration will be around the issue of climate finance, with the aim of using Santiago as a hub to develop a regional network of thinkers on this issue. The NYU Global Climate Finance Project, led by Benedict Kingsbury, Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law, and University Professor Richard Stewart, John Edward Sexton Professor of Law, as well as project director Bryce Rudyk, has charted this new field, bringing together domestic and international policymakers, leaders from the business community, and academic institutions in a collaborative dialogue around the legal dimensions of the emerging global climate finance regime, issues which have largely prevented progress since the Copenhagen Accord that was drafted at the 2009 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The partnership with the University of Chile is a win-win for both institutions, said U.S. Ambassador to Chile Alejandro Wolff. Home to one of Latin America's most prestigious law faculties, the University is aggressively expanding its international outreach, an effort led by its international relations director, Rodrigo Polanco (LL.M.'04). At the same time, Santiago is quickly becoming one of the developing world's most entrepreneurial capitals, benefiting enormously from Chile's steady economic growth, which was acknowledged by its 2010 membership to the OECD.